Some of the most important announcements from Day 1 of the Google IO Conference.
The announcement that this week, Google “crossed over 2 billion active devices of Android.” That is a lot of people.
Also, the Google Assistant has had some exciting updates. It is now available on iPhone. Is this the end of Siri?
But the biggest announcements of Google IO were:
Virtual Reality
Google have announced Daydream, a standalone Virtual reality headset that needs no pesky wires, smartphone or even to be attached to a computer. This device is a completely individual product. (There will be a smartphone option available too!)
The whole device is designed around a first-rate, fully immersive virtual reality experience.
“Dramatically improved tracking, with the technology we call ‘Worldsense.’ With it, your view in the virtual world exactly matches your movement in the real world.” So you can walk around and not bump into anything, as the system can track your movements to within centimetres and recognises the world around you.
“It works by using a handful of sensors on the device that look out into your surroundings. That means it works anywhere. There’s no setup, no cameras to install and with it, you really feel like you’re there.”
The Daydream VR Headset will be released later in 2017.
That’s not all for the VR announcements this year! Google also announced their new Visual Positioning Service (VPS.)
“It’s a bit like GPS, but it looks for distinct visual features in the environment and it triangulates with those.”
“GPS can get you to the door and VPS can get you to the exact item that you’re looking for.” This will be absolutely revolutionary in the way we shop outside. Perhaps this is a bridge between online shopping and brick and mortar shops? It will make the time taken to shop decrease substantially.
Google home
Google’s home help assistant and smart speaker has had some hugely exciting revamps.
Landlines will now be a thing of the past (not that we weren’t expecting that soon anyway.) Google Home will now be able to make and receive phone calls to any landline or mobile number – completely free! You can even sync so that Google Home will recognise your voice and will attach your number to your calls.
All Google Home devices will now come with Bluetooth capabilities to connect to your other devices.
One of the other more impressive updates to the Google Home device are the new visual responses. In other words, if you ask it to show you something, it will sync to your TV and actually show you! This will also include visual representations of your calendar and daily tasks.
Google photos
The newest updates to the Google photo apps are positively revolutionary! Have you ever taken a picture through a fence of a baseball match or an animal at the zoo? The annoying crisscrossed wire gets right in the way. Well, not anymore! Google has introduced their new product, which, through ‘machine learning’ will be able to remove ugly obstructions from your photos. How impressive!
Google lens
Being described as “Vision-based computing capabilities that can understand what you’re looking at.”
Basically, your phone’s camera can tell you about what it sees.
You’re on holiday, you don’t understand the menu? Never fear, Google Lens is here!
Hold your device over the menu and it will visually translate the menu for you.
It will also recognise other things, such as the breeds of flowers – and most likely the breeds of dogs. It will tell you information regarding them, and even where you can buy some. Ever helpful Google.
Another astounding thing that Google Lens can do… (This was greeted with cheers in the amphitheatre.) You can hover your phone over that awkward sticker on the back of your WiFi router and it can recognise all of the digits and sign you in. Yes, there is no more “Z…4…H…S – wait was that S for sugar or F for Freddie?”
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